The past, the present and the future

The past is gone, the present is now and the future contains our hopes and dreams.

A story:
When I was a child there was a TV Show which featured a comedian named Flip Wilson. He used to do a comedy routine about a church which he called “The Church of What's Happening Now”. He portrayed the church's Pastor. He would always start his sermons by saying “At this church you won’t hear much about what happened yesterday, because at this church we are here to talk about what's happening now”.
At first I thought his slogan was just catchy and cute. But I slowly realized that he was trying to teach us something about life. The past is in a sense “yesterday” and it’s gone, we can remember it, we can learn from it, but we can’t change it. Our focus should be on today and tomorrow. These are the things we can do something about, our today (the present) and our tomorrow (the future).

A Lesson:
I think it’s unfortunate that many people find themselves stuck in the past. The past is full of bad things for many of us. Many of us can reflect upon our past, our family’s past or some other past history in which something bad or even horrible was done by us or to us, or our family or group. And while I feel history is important for us to know and understand, so we don’t repeat mistakes; however history is in the past. And while our past is inevitably interfaced with our present and to some degree our future, it doesn’t have to define our present or our future.

I sometimes meet men and women who are dragging the past around like a ball and chain in a metaphorical sense. It it seems that the past Is their focus and they feel so much anger or shame, that they can’t enjoy the present or focus on the future. I sympathize because their feelings of trauma, injury or shame are real, all emotions are real and in general they should not be denied. But they must be acknowledged and dealt with in a concrete fashion. These are memories, which we shouldn’t forget, but we don’t need to dwell on them everyday.

As my grandfather use to say “Make peace with the past by acknowledging that it happened, recognize and understand the pain or shame, then put it where it belongs, in your memories to guide you should conditions ever develop that these wrong doings could be repeated. But in your everyday life you focus on the present and your future. My grandfather also said; ”It’s hard to move forward, while looking backwards.”

I have shared the story of the TV show and the advice of my grandfather with my children and I hope they share it with theirs.

I hope this helps you keep the past in perspective and helps us all move forward.

@shortsegments

All images courtesy of Pixabay and Shutterstock.